XFC brings out the best-of-the-best 3-D airplane and helicopter pilots to battle it out in a weekend-long competition. Logo courtesy of XFC.

Bringing some basic
flight practice back
to your flying can
help clean up rusty
maneuvers.

Futaba Extreme Flight Championship

Chris Mulcahy
cspaced@gmail.com

This year’s Futaba Extreme Flight Championship (XFC) was held at the Champaign County R/C
club in Champaign, Illinois, June 10-12,

2016. Nick Maxwell won the helicopter
portion of the competition, followed by
Jamie Robertson in second place, and
Mitch Marozas in third. There was some
fierce competition from both helicopter
and airplane pilots, a great night show
with fireworks, and some of the best
raffle prizes around.

Frank Noll, Steve Kaluf, and others
do a great job every year, but none of it
is possible without the donations they
receive from individuals and companies.
In fact, this year a GoFundMe campaign
was created to bring in enough support
to hold the event. Luckily, many
generous people contributed and this
awesome event continued for another
year. Here’s hoping that Frank and crew
are able to pull it off again next year.

In addition to the top three finishers,
this year’s helicopter pilots included Ben
Storick, Kevin St-Cyr, James Haley, JC
Zankl, William Ramsey, Daanish Ahmad,
Ryan Sams, and Jordan Horwitz.

Back to Basics

A typical flying day involves me
being one of the few—if not the only—
helicopter pilots at my local club. My
club is actually a great club, and we all
have a good time regardless of who is
flying what. However, I find that as a
result of being the only heli pilot out
there, my helicopter skills don’t progress
as quickly as I would like. In fact, I often
get stuck in the dreaded “rut,” doing the
same flight repeatedly without pushing
myself to try something new and
different.